Welfare

No one wants to see the needy go hungry or without basic necessities like clothes and shelter. After trillions of dollars spent, however, Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty has been an utter failure in reducing homelessness or otherwise helping the poor. Those who are in genuine need tend to rely more on their families, communities, churches, and neighborhoods for assistance, while the federal welfare bureaucracy is characterized by cold inhumanity, fraud, and waste, subsidizing the very social problems it claims to cure.

Many billions are wasted every year, most of it consumed by the bureaucracy itself, while the problems of poverty rage on. It is a bad deal for the taxpayers, but most of all for the Americans caught up in a cycle of endless dependency. Despite the Clinton-era “welfare reform,” heralded by Republicans and Democrats alike, the federal government spends more than ever on its counterproductive welfare state. Meanwhile, many of the root causes of poverty are never addressed, because they involve economic interventions, from labor regulations to licensing laws, that are favored by powerful special interests.